STAMPS; Yes, 'Philatelic' Lover, There Is a Real World

THERE is an continuing debate among hobbyists about the validity, so called, of purely "philatelic" items. These are stamps or cancellations created only to attract collectors, as opposed to "real" postal history items, which reflect the use of stamps or cancellations in the routine operations of a post office.

The most common "philatelic" items by far are the envelopes, usually illustrated, to which new stamps are affixed and then canceled "First Day of Issue." The envelopes seldom pass through normal postal channels, but are processed and delivered to collectors in special packages.

But the range is broad: special cancellations to commemorate new air-mail services, expositions, temporary and shipboard post offices, expeditions, all have their devotees.

Sometimes, though, a piece that started as a purely philatelic item is swept up in the real world and thus acquires more personality. One long-term source of commemorative covers is the Antarctic. More than a dozen nations have sent military and scientific expeditions there, and each, it seems, has yielded collectors' items.

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Someone connected with the expedition, or perhaps a collector elsewhere, prepared an envelope with a rubber-stamped cachet on the left reading "U.S. Naval Antarctic Support Activities, McMurdo Station, Antarctica," added an eight-cent 1971 stamp that marked the 10th anniversary of the scientific treaty covering the continent, and sent the envelope to F.P.O. 95692 for a special "Operation Deep Freeze" cancel.

Unfortunately, a large number of such envelopes never actually travel south; they are processed entirely in San Francisco. Thus the cancel is a fiction. (Since almost all first-day cancellations on United States stamps are applied at the Postal Service's philatelic sales center in Kansas City, Mo., regardless of where the stamps are issued, such "first day" covers are also fictions.)

But in one case, there was an accident: the cover was indeed carried to the Antarctic, where it was stored near a faulty furnace that caused soot stains on the upper-right and lower-left corners. To explain the stains, a postal employee apparently fashioned a rubber stamp ad hoc and added the note (which is missing two letters): "Soiled n POST OFFICE by having furnace tro ble."

Thus a piece that began as a contrived souvenir acquired the flavor of a piece of "real" postal history.

Correction:

The caption with the Stamps column on Dec. 13, about an envelope canceled at a United States research station in Antarctica, described the cancellation incorrectly. It commemorated Operation Deep Freeze; it did not mark the first day of issue.

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A version of this article appears in print on December 13, 1992, on Page 9009019 of the National edition with the headline: STAMPS; Yes, 'Philatelic' Lover, There Is a Real World. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe